The efforts to change Church teaching on the death penalty have ever been characterized by deep mendacity.
Thought For The Day
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 41 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
This topic is again one of projection where people put killers into their shoes, where they imagine that they are just like themselves in many ways.
I have always viewed Capital Punishment as a hygienic process to purify a society of people who corrupt it with their continued existence. The execution needs to occur quickly and efficiently as possible for a much more expansive list of crimes based on the length of imprisonment greater than five years and the frequency of recidivism. I would also include complete financial restitution for the crime to the victims, the cost of trial, imprisonment and execution paid by the extended family of the Criminal. It is not as Christian as it should be, but America is a nihilistic Pagan polity, and we should stop applying Christian ethics of mercy to a society devoid of virtue and filled with uncivilized savages.
“we should stop applying Christian ethics of mercy to a society devoid of virtue and filled with uncivilized savages”
I agree that the death penalty shouldn’t be categorically ruled out, however, you raise a question that has been nagging at me lately. If we cannot practice Christian ethics of mercy in a society “devoid of virtue and filled with uncivilized savages,” then what’s the point of practicing Christian ethics of mercy at all? If you can only practice what Jesus preached in an already Christian society, then how did the early Christians manage to convert “uncivilized savages” like the barbarians who overthrew the (Western) Roman Empire?
then how did the early Christians manage to convert “uncivilized savages” like the barbarians who overthrew the (Western) Roman Empire?
Most of them were already heretical Christians, Arians. Their conversion to Catholicism was a slow process, helped by the fact that the Arian clergy, so far as we can tell, did not go out of their way to make converts outside of the tribes they were affiliated with.
I suspect our friend Mr. McKenna in Richmond has called it. The objection isn’t to particular penalties, but to punishment per se. Once capital sentences are abolished, their lawfare artists will attack life-without-parole. Were that eliminated, the next target would be mandatory minimums.
CS Lewis explains in his essay on “humanitarian punishment” that it is more cruel than any other. Very much worth the time.
I have always viewed opponents of capital punishment as those to seek to improve on the approbation of the Almighty in the matter. They continually come up with arguments against the punishment and/or the protective purpose of the death penalty. The fact that they fail on logic, revelation and natural law bothers them not a whit.
It might be useful to review the legal development of the anti-capital punishment movement rather than addressing whether it is appropriate to apply Chirstian concepts of mercy, repentance, and forgiveness to a post Christian society. It is a 19th and early 20th century socialist movement that denied the criminals responsibility for all crimes against private individuals and institutions. The Criminal in a Capitalist system was compelled into the life of crime by the structural or societal oppression of the Bourgeois established order. The 1920 Soviet Constitution forbade the application of capital punishment for any crime against private citizens except for enemies of the state (the majority of which were extra-judicial and concealed). The same constitution that legalized Abortion made the execution of Criminals illegal. The Cheka, NKVD and Bolshevik state apparatus recruited and used the worse Criminals incarcerated under the Tsarist regime to commit extreme violence against the Russian people in 1920’s and 1930’s. It was a complete morally deprave order that killed 68 to 72 million postnatal Russian and several orders of magnitude more unborn Russians.
This is the societal norm we currently exist in so the medicine to recover guilt and responsibility for crime and punishment needs to be excessively harsh.
Coupling the responsibility for Criminal acts to the family and subculture will create a negative incentive to control children to protect them and their family from growing into disaster
You cannot change Genesis 9:6. Period.
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With the advance of DNA markers the aspect of collateral damage, wrongfully killing an inmate on death row, seems to be lessened. That aspect was always a concern, at least for me.
There have been a couple of cases where DNA collected from evidence 40 years in the past has exonerated the accused, if my memory is correct.
Sadly, much of the attempt to Church teaching on the death penalty (or at least create enough confusion as to enable it) has come from those with reputations for orthodoxy. Among the episcopate, the worst culprit is Archbishop Chaput. But you also have Archbishop Cordileone, who penned a pathetic piece in America magazine about a year or so ago repeating the absurdly false claims made by the anti-death penalty racket and Bishop Strickland tweeting his support for it. No one wants to talk about THAT!
Andrew, why should the family of a murderer pay financial restitution to family of a victim unless, of course they were complicit in the crime?
“I suspect our friend Mr. McKenna in Richmond has called it. The objection isn’t to particular penalties, but to punishment per se. Once capital sentences are abolished, their lawfare artists will attack life-without-parole. Were that eliminated, the next target would be mandatory minimums.”
It seems as though this has been underway for some time. Life without parole is often NOT that in practice.
Pope Francis has already made statements against life sentences.
Greg Mockeridge, yes, restitution to victims from the family of the Criminal should be automatic and extreme. Social and moral norms need to be introduced and enforced for the entire sub-culture that creates and justifies criminal acts.
Today, the parents of criminals are frequently compensated for the deaths of their child at the hands of law enforcement. Profiting from the death of a Criminal by misadventure is immoral.